The Backroom Meeting

((I apologize in advance if this seems as atrocious as the source material))

The room was tense, leaders from varied religions had been asked by Carpathia for a conference. There were some curt looks between people, ethnic and religious hatreds died hard. However they came, a mixture of obligation, curiosity and perhaps a desire to meet Carpathia brought them. He entered, eyes drawn to him, the small conversations stopped.

"Gentlemen, I asked you here for a fairly complex discussion, I invited each of you specifically either due to your devotion, charisma or various good works." Privately it was also because many of them had ambitions and prejudices he could exploit, but that was for later. "I ask you here because the situation we face is, for lack of a better term, of a divine nature."

Silence, to be expected, given what happened most people believed that the comment about electromagnetism was a lie but said anything openly. "The disappearances were a declaration of war by an entity that aspires to be the divinity of mankind. It acted as a thief, abducting our children and its most loyal as well as taking those that would cause great havoc if they vanished." He saw the skepticism in their eyes, he paused, this would have to be a more subtle application than usual of his normal powers to manipulate minds, making them mere puppets would be impractical he instead let them feel a kind of awakening, a feeling of living light coursing through them, a growing epiphany as he spoke.

"There is a divinity...perhaps it is the oversoul of the enlightenment perhaps it is Allah, Krishna, I know not. I felt its presence, its voice when the disaster came, I was told of what had happened and what was to come, I pleaded for its aid, it gave me some insight and knowledge of what will come. It has been sensed by others as well, many of the holy men of the past have felt it indirectly and tried to interpret it." And now the rage, many of them shouted now or proclaimed in anger how they had nothing in common with the heathen and 'other' that the other religions represented.

"How Dare you?!"
"Blasphemy!"
"You know not enlightenment nor what you speak!"

Carpathia growled out, "LISTEN TO ME," letting himself deflate slightly he looked at them plaintively, "Please..please listen. This being, this false divinity that stole our families and tore this world asunder isn't done. It's going to try to break the back of our societies and turn us into mindless slaves. The divinity that spoke to me, that tried to aid me..I..I can't do this alone. You are all men and women of power, charisma, and influence. If humanity is to have a hope against this threat, then we can't keep battling over the varied texts, we can't let ourselves stand divided against a foe that will try to devour us whole."



He stepped back, tears filling his eyes, crying on cue was a useful trait and one that he had honed. "Please, I wouldn't ask all this of you if I wasn't desperate. Things are far worse than this false divinity, the being that stole children and tore families asunder still has followers here on this world, some coming to bow after the event. What I have seen says that great horrors will be unleashed and that they will be rendered immune! There are too many innocents that will suffer, too many of our remaining brothers and sisters that will entrapped in the coming darkness unless we stand together."

The seed of epiphany had been planted before, and he could sense the gentle nudging of their own desires, some saw a chance for power, others saw a chance to ensure primacy of faith, and more than a few saw a chance to prove that their way was the right way, and each found ways to cloak their selfish aims in the noblest of cloth. It helped that they felt a brush of a powerful hand, and each assumed it was their own. One of them finally spoke, "What would you have us do?"

Carpathia took a deep breath, his face looking pained, "I ask that we call an ecuminical council, claim a grand revelation that shows a united path. If we can do this we have a chance. Faith is a bond that can hold us together even in crisis, and if the true divinity, the one that inspired the true prophets can speak to us we might find protections of our own, at least that much we can hope."

He listened to their words, but more their thoughts, shaping a few simple ideas, and in the end each one had their basic plans, a true unity he reflected. Each one planned to publicly support the unified system but secretly explain that theirs alone was the only right way, plenty more strife and it would make future 'witch hunts' all the easier. Ah, humanity.

A World Without God - Part 3

I got the three back to their community this morning. Those there seemed like nice people. It was a refreshing change to meet people who seemed genuinely ... nice. Kind hearted, as if they had somehow avoided the rot that afflicted the rest of humanity. It was the first time since the fall that I'd meet people that I didn't feel I had to be on my guard with. They gave me food, they gave me water, and for much of the day they simply talked to me. They told me of their theory for what happened. They believed that God had caused the disappearances and, haven taken the righteous, would punish the world for seven years before returning in glory to save us all.

There were some points I might have nitpicked in that theory given time, but I was more interested in where they got it. I was assured that it came from the Bible (though I had never heard of such a thing) and they promised to tell me more later. Then they asked about me. I told them about Jessica, and how I hope to save her.

That's when it went wrong.

When the word “witch” was mentioned I realized that perhaps telling them about how I could feel that Jessica was still alive wasn't the best idea. Maybe I should have said that I thought she was alive, or guessed it, or maybe I shouldn't have brought it up at all. The point is, when previously nice seeming people suddenly turn cold and approach you in a menacing way and the first thing one of them says is, “You shall not suffer a witch to live,” something has gone horribly wrong.

The person who ran throughout the entire settlement shouting, “Witch!” probably didn't help either. Soon it seemed that every one of them was roused. I found myself walking backwards slowly, empty hands in front of me, palms facing them, so that they could see I was unarmed and not a threat.

I tried to explain that I wasn't a witch. It didn't work. One said, “That dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death.”

That didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I wasn't going to let it go unchallenged. “Now hang on a minute,” I almost tripped over a root, but caught myself and kept walking back. I didn't want to run for fear they'd chase, but I also didn't want them even one step closer to me. “I didn't dream any dreams.”

They kept on approaching. In unison, which bothered me for some reason. I'm not sure why people walking in lockstep would be more troubling to me than, say, the furry cat sized many legged demon beasts that I once saw devour a live moose, but it was.“There's no dreams here.”

But there was the knowledge that I did have a power that I couldn't explain. I'd used it to save these people's friends, so I wasn't sure why they had such a problem with it. That moment seemed to be the perfect time to test whether or not I could use it on command, considering that I figured I was unlikely to survive without it's help. I tried to call up the feeling I had had.

It worked, things again came into sharp focus. It didn't help. I could see every pore on each of their faces. It didn't help. I was sure that, if I wanted to, I could empty my gun killing one of them for every bullet fired. That was useless. So what if I killed a bunch of them? There would be a hundred more.

From the back of the growing crowd, a chant of, “Burn the witch,” arose. I was pretty sure that wasn't Biblical, but I figured I had to choose my battles. I tried to push my senses further.

I was flooded with information. Of the crowd in front of me three deserved more attention than the rest, they were somewhat closer to me than the others, and would be the first to act when actions finally came. They were each armed with a pistol. The one on the left had an old 22. It was well built, but misaligned. It would misfire three out of every ten shots. If I had to let one get a shot off, having him be the one would minimize the risk. The other two had newer guns, identical to each other and several other guns in the crowd. Standard issue of some kind. They'd probably been looted from the local police. All three had old injuries, but they'd all been healed. Nothing that could help me in a fight. Besides, if I actually tried to fight the crowd would be on me in moments.

I'd backed out passed the buildings, which meant no cover until I reached the trees. I found that I knew the locations of the trees nearest me without looking. I also knew that there was exactly one person behind me. She wasn't a threat. She was standing alone off to my right. She wasn't moving, she didn't seem to know what to do. She was unarmed.

In fact, every single woman in the community was unarmed. That seemed odd. It couldn't be for lack of guns. There were more guns than there were men. The population was split about fifty-fifty along gender lines: one hundred and thirty five men, one hundred and forty six women. There were two hundred and three guns. The oddity wasn't just in guns. Of all of the knives there was only one in the possession of a woman. She was cooking. One of five women who kept working instead of joining the “Burn the witch” crowd. Of the other four, three were washing clothes and one was sewing a patch into the worn out knee of a pair of jeans. No men were still working.

Anyway, I considered using the woman as a hostage, but quickly rejected the idea. If these people were convinced that they would go straight to heaven when they died, the possibility of one of their own dying might not be much of a deterrent. At best she'd be a human shield they might shoot right through.

I tried to find anything useful in the information I had. The ground hadn't been cleared of roots, the fact that I knew where they were and could avoid being tripped up without looking might be some kind of advantage, but not enough to deal with one hundred and thirty five armed men.

I pushed my new found, definitely not in any way satanic, ability further … and learned nothing of value. The buildings they'd set up were somewhat shoddy, they didn't seem to know what they were doing. Critical joints were held together by fraying twine while high quality screws were wasted in places they weren't even needed. They had a somewhat eclectic collection of possessions, the most notable being an apple peeler and corer which couldn't really have much practical value, especially considering the total lack of apples. They had an impressive stockpile of canned food, it was stored in an large basement dug out beneath one of the houses. For some reason they had a lot of canned tomatoes.

By pushing my consciousness outward more I was able to tell how many of them were wearing crosses (one hundred and seventy three) and what metal most of those were composed of (pewter.) That totally failed to help. As did every other bit of similar trivia I discovered.

All of that took three steps to learn. Three steps from when I first called on the ability to when it told me about pewter crosses. On the fourth step back I realized that I was looking at things the wrong way. I'd been dealing with inhuman things too long. Things that were faster than me. Things that could follow my scent and see me in the dark. Things that I couldn't simply run from. And so, somehow, I forgot one of the most important lessons videogames had ever taught me: running away is a perfectly legitimate tactic. When dealing with humans at least.

No one approaching me was especially well trained. They probably weren't the best shots. I didn't have to make it that far. As soon as I was in the trees it should be easy to prevent them from getting a line of sight, and I should also be able to out run them. I could feel the position of the trees, I knew where roots and branches were in the way. I knew that if I could just make it to the woods I could get away.

I spun and ran as fast as I could, guns were fired, but when I made it to the first tree only dirt, rock and wood had been shot. I was steps from being in the clear when someone finally aimed their weapon properly. I could feel that the shot was good, and I could tell that it was too late to get out of the way. I felt the trigger being squeezed, I sensed the hammer fall, and as the primer ignited I started to realize that I was going to die. Then something impacted the gun.

The bullet didn't stay in the gun long enough for it to be pushed too far off course, but it was enough. A tree to my left took the shot and in two steps I was safely out of the line of fire. It was sometime around then when I realized what the something that hit the gun had been. It was whatshername, one of the three I had saved. I guessed there was such a thing as karma. As near as I could tell she didn't face retribution, so no one got hurt. Except the tree, but it could take it.

So, overall an interesting day. I've got a full belly and they've long since given up on chasing me. Now I lay me down to sleep.

A World Without God - Part 2

[Since the last one the food situation has been resolved and the narrator has set out on his own to rescue his friend]

I could hear people, which so far had never been a good thing. Definitely worth finding out who they were before they knew I existed. I found out that they were in the middle of a quarry, or a sandpit, or something like that. Steep gravelly sides, one of which I was peering over the edge of. I'd played in places like it when I was young, it was impossible to come down the sides and stay in control. You had to run as fast as you could just to keep from falling over forward, and the surface slid out from under you with every step. The only sane way in would be the road, which in this case required a long coverless approach.

As places to be went, it wasn't that bad. You had a pretty good defense against anything that didn't fly. Anything that came in down the road you'd see a mile away, anything that came down the side would be at a disadvantage.

They'd lit torches, in a circle. Seven men with guns were standing, with knives, over three people they'd tied to stakes. You don't need to be told what's going on when you see that. Criminals you shoot in the head. If bullets are scarce then it's a knife to the back of the neck, between vertebrae. The only reason to take time is for fun.

Fun.

I licked my lips as I thought about all the things I could do with a knife and three helpless strangers.

I shook my head but the thoughts wouldn't leave. I pushed them to the back of my mind. If they had to be in there let them stay in the dark recesses. Let them be confined to the unlit corridors and musty storerooms. Not in the front, in the light, on stage. Anywhere but there.

I was busy, I didn't have time for ... fun.

I had to figure out what to do with the situation in front of me. Really it was simple: There were more of them than there was of me. They might have their knives out, but a glance was enough to see that they were all armed with more. I was pretty sure I saw both handguns and rifles. The victims were strangers. I had things to do. The best course of action was downright obvious.

Except... except that once upon a time it would have been just as obvious, yet completely different. Before I would have known exactly what to do. I would have felt it deep inside. Back then I knew what was right. Ever since things changed I had been trying to get that back. I was hoping that if I went through the motions of doing the right thing, eventually it would become habit and maybe, eventually, something more.

Everything I did was predicated on the idea that maybe, someday, my moral compass would start working again. Until then I was groping at the memory of where it used to point. And that memory said, “You don't leave unarmed people to be slaughtered.”

Problem being, that was suicidal. How was I supposed to regain my humanity if I was dead? I didn't have an answer.

I said, “Fuck it,” to the world, and charged.

My first steps were wobbly. The ground was just as bad as I expected and I was pretty sure that I'd be dead before I had a chance to do anything.

Then something changed. My footing got surer. My vision got clearer. I felt liked I'd just had my glasses professionally cleaned. I chose my target, I imagined that the man lit up like I had selected him in a computer program. I drew my gun, I found I didn't need to aim, I just pointed the gun where it felt right, pulled the trigger, and the man died.

It should have surprised me. Normally I can't hit a target at ten feet if I'm standing still and looking straight down the sight. Yet for some reason it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Normally the sound of my own pistol makes me recoil, this time it washed over me without jarring me at all.

I didn't need to look at where the gun was pointing, I felt it, I didn't need to look at where the men were, I felt it. I knew the feeling. It was the same thing that told me Jessica was still alive. It was what told you someone was watching when your senses told you you were alone. It was what told you to duck just before something jumped out at you. It was everything the eyes can't see and the ears can't hear.

I gave myself over to it, trusted it to show me what to do. I chose another target. Again, I pointed where it felt right, pulled the trigger, and the man died. Time seemed to slow down. Another round fired, another enemy down. A bullet kicked up dirt to my left, some bastard had shot on me, I figured I should return the favor. Unlike him, I didn't miss. It was as easy as point and click. I did it again, I watched as one casing was ejected and the next round moved into place. I found I could feel the action slide, I felt the round as it was positioned, I moved with the hammer, the feeling of the primer igniting was indescribable, almost ecstasy. Expanding gas pushed the round from the gun, and soon another man was dead.

Tension in me released with that of the spring in the magazine as another round was pushed into place. Again I went through the motions of firing the pistol -I dropped with the hammer, ignited with the primer, expanded with the gas- but this time my awareness exploded forward with the bullet. I was flying. Spinning through the air. Flesh and bone tried to stop me, but the best they could do was slow me down.

Then I was back in myself. Standing on the quarry floor. The last of the men falling to the ground before me. Seven shots fired, seven people dead. It was impossible. But it had happened, and there were still the three tied up people to deal with. Two women, one man.

I pulled out my knife and cut them free before I could process the ideas that inevitably sprang into my mind. Before I said anything to them, before they said anything to me, I armed them with weapons taken from the nearest dead guy. They thought it was because I trusted them; they were wrong. How could I trust them? I didn't know them. The truth was that I would much rather find myself shot than have to face what I might do when faced with three people who couldn't defend themselves.

The most terrifying thing in the world these days is having power over another human being.

They offered me food and supplies if I could return them to their people. I would have rather left them there and just gone to find Jessica, but the problem with not knowing where you're going is that you don't know how much food you need to pack to get there. I was running low on food.

So we're going. Together. In the wrong direction.

A World Without God - Part 1

You could feel that the world had changed, right after the disappearances. Inside of you something changed. Your conscience was weaker. Negative thoughts crept in more often, and were harder to shake out. The suffering of others didn't effect you as much.

I thought it was just a response to the tragedy at first. With so much pain it made sense to put up walls, but that wasn't it. Compassion and empathy deadened. You had to fight to keep feeling them. You had to fight to keep the horrible thoughts from your mind. You had fight with all your will not to become something inhuman. Most people weren't up for the effort.

As things got worse with people, other changes went unnoticed. The sudden problems with sea travel barely made the news, and the reports of monsters were treated with scorn the few times they were mentioned. By the time people realized humanity wasn't the only thing that had been changed it was too late. The oceans belonged to them.

Soon after I saw my first monster. It wasn't one of the coiled sea beasts, it was something else entirely. Some nameless horror from within the earth. The ground rumbled, the earth split open, and the first pieces of it reached the surface. It was formless, a mass of flesh and bone that had never known a designer's hand. It's limbs grabbed buildings, and people, and trees. Some smashed through the ground and acted as anchors, and it pulled itself from the earth. Its own bones shattered and reformed as it moved, that was the only noise you could hear over the destruction.

Once it was out it started eating. It didn't seem to discriminate. People, pets, cars, statues, buildings; it ate them all. It would skewer something or someone on one of its limbs, and then drag its victim back to its central mass, a mouth would tear open, engulf its food, then close and disappear beneath the thing's shifting skin.

I was there when it first broke through, in a field half a mile from the house where I grew up. That was around quarter of eight in the morning. By sunset the town I'd spent my whole life in was gone. Devoured.

Fun fact: the interstate highway systems was created for two reasons. The first was to be able drive a tank anywhere in the country at a speed of 50 miles per hour. The second was to allow the survivors of a nuclear holocaust a way to get far enough away from the cities that they might rebuild along the road. Neither of those things actually requires more than one state to be involved, which is why there are interstates in Hawaii.

Not that I've ever been to Hawaii. What the interstates did not anticipate was that those fleeing the cities might be followed by things that wanted to eat them. There isn't any cover if you're on the road. We lost at least a hundred in the first attack. No one knows what did it; no one who stopped to look survived. We went to the woods after that.

It wasn't safe, but it seemed safer. Things moved in the shadows, at first we thought it was just the wildlife, but it set in, gradually, that there was something else. Something smarter than foxes and bears. There was never a scream, never a struggle. Every so often someone would simply stop being there.

All the while we degraded. A notion would slip into your mind, something you never thought you'd ever think. Something you knew should disgust or horrify you, but instead you'd find it enticing. No matter how you tried to drive it out, it would linger, every free moment it would occupy your thoughts. The urge to simply do it would grow and grow. Some people gave in.

Your perspective on the world is forever changed the first time you dump the body of someone you executed in a ditch, fully aware that you wanted to do the very thing you shot him in the head for doing. That you still want to do it. That your desire to do it keeps growing. That someday you'll give in and then you'll be the one in a ditch. Or worse still, you'll get away with it. That no one will stop you and you'll just keep on doing the same thing.

Several thousand people made it out of my home town with me. Inhuman monsters could only be blamed to bringing that number down to around two thousand, that means that the reason the current population is barely half that can be blamed solely on ourselves.

I came to realize that the religious people were right. It don't claim to know the exact truth, I have no denomination, but it is clear to me that there was some cosmic battle between good and evil. There was some greater good outside of ourselves. Something that kept our darker impulses at bay, something that propped us up and prevented us from ever having to face the true horror of human nature. Something that fought to hold back the darkness. And it lost.

It lost when the disappearances happened. Since then we've been on our own, and everything we were once protected from has come out of hiding, crawling from the darkest cracks of the world, and the darkest recesses of our minds. Things best kept in darkness have started coming into the light.

I don't know what happened to the missing, I don't know where they went, but it can't be worse than here. I like to think that they're evacuees. That whatever was holding back the evil in the world knew it couldn't hang on any more and loaded as many as it could into the lifeboats. Children first. Then some adults. As for the rest of us, there just weren't enough life boats.

Some people still refuse to believe the religious explanation, but any doubts I had were washed away when Danny died. At first it seemed like he had succumb to his baser instincts. He just went hunting, with a pistol. First a teenage boy, then a teenage girl, then those who came to investigate the screams and shots, then random people, then those sent to hunt him.

But when we finally found him you could see something was different, there was something in him, and around him, it made him difficult to look at, your eyes couldn't quite focus, he almost seemed blurry around the edges. He was fighting with whatever it was, he had tied himself to a tree and it was trying to make him free himself. We didn't get a chance to kill him, he did it himself.

Badly.

Though he put the gun to his head, the wound wasn't immediately fatal. I think he tried to tell us something as he was dying, but it was impossible to understand. Whatever got in him wasn't an alien or an inter-dimensional whatever, it was supernatural. He was possessed.

I don't know how you fight that. I don't have any garlic and I doubt it would work anyway.

Danny was a reminder, I'm just not entirely sure of what. Don't let your guard down? There's always something worse?

Two days later the last person I knew from before was taken. Not killed, taken. An inky black thing appeared behind her in the night. Other than the wings it looked like a poor attempt at sculpting a human. I could have done something. I saw it, I saw its faceless head turn to me, then to her. I should have warned her, told her to run, or duck, or something, but I couldn't find the words. Malformed arms wrapped around her, and with a flap of its wings she was gone.

She's still alive. I can feel it. I don't know how, I don't know why, and I don't care. It's enough to know. Trouble is, I can't get her back right now.

When we were all too busy dealing with foreign thoughts creeping into our minds, missing persons, and the damage left by the disappearances we failed to notice another change. We didn't notice until after we were forced to flee our homes. There was one change more subtle than the rest, which threatened us more than each other, more than any abomination. The land had changed too. Crops started to wither in the fields, fields we had hoped to live off of.

It's clear now that there will be no harvest, so we did the sensible thing. We found a city that hadn't been destroyed. It was abandoned, no doubt for fear of the others, and we looted it. All the food we could carry. Then we went back for more. We got enough that I thought that maybe, just maybe, we could survive. Yesterday it was stolen. Every can. The people guarding it were killed. Not just killed. Whoever did it to them enjoyed themselves.

I don't know a lot about wounds, but a medical student we have told me what was done to them while they were alive. Don't really want to know how she could tell.

It was done with knives, the others don't need knives. They have claws, and teeth, and worse. That means humans did it, that means humans stole it, that means we can get it back. Maybe. Without knowing how many and how armed there's always the chance this is suicide. Hence this.

I realized that I've left nothing behind. The place where I lived my life is gone. I went back once, I told people to see if anything could be scavenged nearby, but the truth was that I wanted to see it. I was hoping something would be left. There wasn't. It was a hole in the ground. A canyon dug by that thing's teeth, heading westward as far as the eye could see. Everything I ever made, or influenced or touched before my hometown fell was gone.

If I die, I want to leave something behind. Something that says that I was here. Something that makes me more than a forgotten casualty. I've never written a diary before, I guess I'm not very good at it, but at least it's something. If I live to write another entry I promise it'll be less scattered.

One other thing. If I don't make it back, if I do in fact die. That means I won't be able to save my friend. You have to. I don't know who you are, I don't know what you think, but it doesn't matter. You have to save her. This is imperative, it is non negotiable.

Finding her is simple. Head north west. When you start to feel like something is wrong, like you shouldn't be doing this, that means you're going the right way. Follow that feeling. As it grows in the pit of your stomach that means your getting closer. Follow it until you feel it in your bones. When every part of you is screaming at you to turn back, to give up, to drop everything and run like hell, keep going.

If you do that I'm sure you'll find her, and I know she's still alive. I can feel it as clearly as I can feel the pen I'm using to write this with. Her name is Jessica, she has green eyes and brown hair. She was wearing a red shirt and bluejeans when she was taken. Find her, and save her. If your conscience has faded to the point you can't see any altruistic reasons for doing it, then consider this: if I had been taken instead of her, she would have rescued me by now and gotten our food supplies back. She's that good. Your chances of survival are much better with her on your side than they'd ever be alone.

A badly botched interview

Buck was about to interview the many many thought would be the next Pope, but his mind was entirely on Chloe. They'd touched again last night. Nothing impressive, he just put his hand to her cheek, but if felt right, he wanted to do it again. He'd spent his whole life in a world without literal human contact. He had lived in a bubble only broken by handshakes and those were mostly with people he was pretty sure were trying to screw him over or sources met in dirty cafes and grungier allies. Nothing to compare with the experience of simply reaching out and touching Chloe's cheek.

He wanted more of it, he want to experience that physical connection again. And then again and again. Was he going too fast? To slow? Why the hell hadn't anyone ever thought to explain any of this to him? It was like the world went from thinking him to young, to assuming he already knew. Should they hold hands next time they met? When did they reach the point where they could tear each other's clothes of and have sex?

And where the fuck did that leap come from?

That bothered him. It wasn't supposed to work like that. Or was it? Did it mean that he was mistaking lust for love, or was it natural to think that way about someone you loved?

Why in hell didn't the give out a manual for this shit in high school?

It was time to start the interview and he tried to push everything out of his mind, but the attempt failed and he had to start while distracted and frustrated.

"Why didn't you tell me you were a candidate for the papacy?" Buck began. Some part of him realized it was rude and needlessly confrontational. This was not how they taught him to interview in school, but his mind wasn't on what he had been taught, it was on what his education left out.

"So, we're just going to jump right into it, are we?" Mathews said. "Don't you like a little champagne in the morning?"

When he said, “No thanks,” Buck realized that his tone was unacceptable. He didn't care, he was pissed off and Mathews was there. The fact that he wasn't pissed off at Mathews -that Mathews wasn't in any way responsible for his insecurities or his ignorance when it came to love and dating- didn't matter. Mathews was there, Buck needed to vent, Mathews got to be the target.

"Well, you won't mind if I have a little pick-me-up."

"Suit yourself. Tell me when you're available to chat."

"Thank you, Caryn," he said, as if to an old friend. Apparently she was. When she was gone he whispered, "The Litewski family, from my first parish. Baptized her myself. She's worked this flight for years. Now where were we?"

The reporter in Buck clawed its way back back to the surface and he realized that this was a perfect opportunity to get Mathews to talk about his early career. Talking about Caryn and his first Parish could be used to segway into why he joined the priesthood, what his experience was like being a simple priest, what he his hopes and dreams had been. Whether he ever saw himself as becoming Pope back then, and if he did what he thought he'd do as Pope. From there it would be easy and natural to move on to how things had changed since then in the church and the world, as well as how Mathews had changed.

By bringing up his first parish Mathews had opened the door to a very personal way to approach talking about Mathews entire career. Even corny questions like, “What do you think the Father Mathews who baptized Caryn would say to Pope Mathews?” could be just the kind specific detail needed to differentiate his article from every other “The man who will be Pope” article that would be flooding the market.

Buck could even interview Caryn to get the view from a parishioner and – Buck suppressed a shudder. The last time he took an interest in a flight attendant he wound up getting her a job for the antichrist and hadn't figured out a way to get her back out again. He'd gone through a thousand things to say in his head, and always came back to the same problem. Anything that she would believe wouldn't convince her to leave, anything he said that might have the power to convince her to leave wouldn't be believed. He needed to find something to make her leave Nicolae's employ that didn't resort to things that she would dismiss as religious fanaticism.

Buck wasn't going to risk screwing with Caryn's life.

Mathews had apparently had his fill of silence, "Oh, yes, you were wondering why I didn't mention the papacy. I guess I thought everyone knew. Carpathia knew."

[After telling Buck that he will very definitely become Pope, and that this will mean much more than being in charge of the Roman Catholic Church, Mathews says:]

"It'll be announced later this morning, and if you do not quote me directly, Ill give you the first shot at it."

Buck thought, Gee, thanks. I work at a weekly magazine. You're giving me the scoop a few hours ahead of time so I can report it days after everyone else. I shall forever be in your debt. Just one question, “Why would you do that?”

"Because I like you."

Right, because everyone who likes me gives me exclusives I can't use, besides, "You hardly know me."

"But I know Nicolae."

Buck sank in his seat. "And,” in spite of an ongoing effort to be as rude as I can be without being killed, “Nicolae likes me."

"Exactly."

Buck wondered what it would take to make Nicolae lose interest. As long as Nicolae was paying attention he couldn't do anything useful, even the slightest indication that he knew the truth and Nicolae would notice and use his domination of the media to shut Buck down. Possibly have Buck killed while he was at it. If Nicolae would just move on, just see Buck as another of the 40,000 reporters in the US, then Buck probably still couldn't publish an article saying, “Nicolae is the ANTICHRIST!!!” but he could come closer. He could lace his writing with insinuation, implications and inconvenient facts and maybe, just maybe, get his readers to make the final connection on their own.

He'd done everything in his power to make himself the kind of employee you don't want and Nicolae was still interested. He didn't know what to do. The others thought he should take the job, but if he did that he'd essentially be extending his moratorium on actual reporting and evangelizing indefinitely. He could probably get information, but there'd be nothing he could do with it. He'd have the power to reach every human being on earth, with the only catch being that if he ever so much as tried to use that power for good he'd lose it.

It was one hell of a catch.

Buck realized that he'd allowed the silence to draw out for far too long. Perhaps he should use that to say something that would make Mathews think that he was arrogant and incredibly dull. Something that made him look to stupid to employ. Then Mathews might report back to Nicolae that Buck wasn't worth the effort. Time to state the obvious. "So this little ride-along was not really entirely the result of my legwork."

"Ah, no," Mathews said.

When Meta-Cameron Met Meta-Chloe: The introduction

A revisiting of the courtship of Cameron and Chloe with, you know, better characters and whatnot. The LB version with Fred's commentary is here and here.

Cameron’s head was buzzing as he made his way through the airport. The last time he’d felt anything remotely like this was during the ‘MaGog’ incident. The official explanation then was a sophisticated, multi-tiered computer virus code-named MaGog disabled the entire Russian and Iranian war machines in the middle of a strike against Israel. The reality was planes falling from the sky, missiles detonating harmlessly in mid-flight, and a tiny nation escaping the wrath of a former superpower totally unscathed. Any explanation seemed too small for the scale of what he witnessed. Every attempted explanation just made the whole thing seem bigger and more frightening.

Now, it was the massive, world-wide disappearances of every child, as well as a small number of adults, mostly Americans. All anyone could call it was “The Event”, and while there was some official claim of electro-magnetic radiation, once more, the reality was too big for such a small explanation. And every small answer just showed how big this event was.

Cameron was meeting an airline pilot who was in the air at the time of the Event. Cameron hoped the pilot might have seen something, or heard something, or noticed something on his instruments. Clues about the Event had been scarce so far, and Cameron had a deadline for filing his story. Fortunately, he’d met a flight attendant who knew the captain, trading a meet-and-greet with the new U.N. Sec-Gen for the interview. An uneven trade probably, but if this captain could break the story, no one would care about the U.N. for weeks.

Read the rest

Cookie Love, Part 2

[Author’s Note: This isn’t, technically, a story that takes place in the reality-based version of Left Behind.  It’s simply an attempt to respond to the latest T.F. post by writing a love story…about cookies and airports.]

Sam shuffled in to the security line, glad to be rid of her giant suitcase.  She craned her neck and attempted to look between the shoulders and heads of the people ahead of her.  Every once in a while she caught a glimpse of a shaggy head of hair rising head and shoulders above almost every one else.  Once he turned, caught her eye and smiled.  She couldn’t help but smile back.

It had been a strange week, that was for sure.

She certainly hadn’t planned on having anything to do with boys during the trip to DC.  It had only been a couple weeks ago that she’d decided to take a much needed break.  Freshman year of high school was the last time she’d been single, after all.

Not that she’d planned it that way, really.  Throughout junior high she’d been ignored.  She’d lacked sports acumen and wasn’t exactly surrounded by people who admired her for the A grades that littered her report cards.  She was an egghead, everyone had said, a teacher’s pet.  It wasn’t a good way to make friends or gain popularity.

Freshman year had been worse.  While all her friends were starting to date and go to dances she was overlooked.  And it wasn’t just because she was lower than everyone else’s field of vision.  Everyone seemed to look past or through her.  She was a no one, a nobody.  And it hurt.  It didn’t matter that she attended Waubonsie Valley, a suburban Chicago school so vast it had multiple campuses, separated by class year.  It didn’t matter that it was almost impossible to be noticed in such a place.  She wanted to make a name for herself.

She’d spent the summer after her freshman year out at her grandparents’ house in Rhode Island.  For reasons she didn’t understand at the time several of the local boys noticed her and spent the summer subtly, at least in their minds, jockeying for her attention.  She’d figured out then that boys were actually pretty easy, if you knew what you were doing.

Basically, you needed to do something that made you stand out.  After you got some attention you just had to get their competitive juices flowing.  Once they were all trying to get past each other there was nothing more to it.

Newly confident, she’d returned to school in the fall with a more open personality, more ready smile, and a penchant for a sexier wardrobe.  She hadn’t wanted to go for the slut look, just less plain and more eye-catching than she’d ever worn before.  But that was just step one.

Step 2 was about rejection.  Specifically of the first few boys who actually did notice her and tried to ask her out.  The first time, she’d been forced to admit, felt pretty good.  She had power, the feeling of controlling someone else’s emotions and destiny.  It hadn’t hurt that the boy in question was Tommy Gilchrist, who she’d had a major crush on in junior high and had rejected her the previous year when she’d asked him to Turnabout.

The next couple after that weren’t nearly so satisfying.  One of them was a rather sweet, awkward guy named Ben who probably hadn’t even noticed her change of attitude or wardrobe.  But he didn’t fit in with her concept of who she was and what she wanted to be, so she’d just shot him down without giving it much thought until later.

By the time she really took to self reflection, though, her strategy had begun to pay off.  There was something about being regarded as a stone cold bitch that got everyone’s attention.  Not all of it was good attention, of course, but as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

She’d made sure to keep up her grades while rebranding herself.  By graduation she had the one of the highest GPAs in her class, a mound of ex-boyfriends and a reputation as a slut with a Napoleon complex.  Her plan had been to skip most of that during college.  She’d figured she’d meet a nice guy and they’d fall in love over poetry and foreign films or some other such stereotypical college romance fantasy.

It hadn’t worked out that way.  She’d discovered right off the bat that college boys were just as easy to manipulate as high school boys.  Maybe even more so.  She’d also discovered that they had no interest in deep discussions of Keats, Kafka, or Kieslowski.  At least, not the ones she seemed to meet.

She’d also discovered that the word “slut” wasn’t really tossed around too much in college.  Everyone was doing it, after all.  It was easier to just keep doing what she’d been doing before.  She didn’t have to think about it too much, didn’t have to risk getting her heart broken.  And she’d gotten used to always having someone around, even if she was sure she only wanted him for a little while.

Over Christmas break that year she’d run in to Ben.  He’d told her that he’d met a girl his freshman year in college and was seriously considering proposing to her.  As he’d spoken he’d gotten this faraway look, like there was nothing in the world but his beloved.

A little voice in the back of her head said, “That could be you he’s talking about.”

When she got back to campus she’d tried to go back to her normal life.  But in the back of her mind all she could think about was how much she’d fucked up, how in trying so damn hard to be what she wanted to be she’d become someone she didn’t want to be.  She found herself waking up in the middle of the night and crying.

One night about a month ago she’d woken her then-temporary-boyfriend.  He’d sat up, looked at her, and said, “Wanna fool around?”

She’d kicked him out of her room before he’d managed to get his pants all the way on.  Several floormates had been drawn out of bed by the sound of her screaming, forcing him in to what she was sure was a deeply embarrassing retreat.  She didn’t care.  Six years of bottled up anger and repressed self-loathing had chased him out in to that hallway.

She’d felt lighter, somehow.  More flexible.  Almost like she could go for a run and lift right off the concrete.

The next morning she’d decided to swear off boys for a while.  The upcoming trip to DC had seemed like a good opportunity to make it stick.

That first morning she’d seen the big, awkward kid nervously glancing at her across the room.  Something about him had just made her want to go over and hug him, tell him he’d be okay.  At lunch time she’d finally figured out why.  He reminded her, just a little, of Ben.

It had really just been a mad impulse that had led her to go talk to him on the Mall.  His confusion and fright had been cute, in that way that lost puppies are cute.  His obvious, stuttering inability to explain why it was strange and disturbing that they had the same name was endearing.  Then they’d sat and talked about books and movies and she hadn’t wanted it to end.

What had been a somewhat altruistic attempt to exorcise her own demons and convince herself that she wasn’t just a calculating slut and not a stone cold bitch had become something else.  The rest of the week had gone by in a whirlwind of all-day lectures and long night time conversations with Sam.  That thought brought a smile as she heard him say her full name, drawing out the second and third syllables as if to draw attention from the fact that the first syllable was the same for both.

She’d taken to calling him “Samuel” as a joke.  He’d seemed somehow pleased with that.

Again she craned her neck.  Sam was looking for her.

They locked eyes.  She winked.  He smiled.

But she could have sworn it looked like he was blinking back tears.